Comments on: Is Gold Money?

By: Laurie

Laurie — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:29:22 +0000

But here's what I want to know. Who decides what gold is worth? What's to keep the value of gold from being manipulated? What if everyone buys gold, the dollar collapses and then we're all told, 'sorry, gold is no longer desirable'? If I sound naive, well, it's because I am. Which is why I'm asking.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:21:47 +0000

But here's what I want to know. Who decides what gold is worth? If the dollar collapses, what's to keep the value of gold from being manipulated? What if everyone is then told, 'gold is no longer desirable?'
If I sound naive, well, it's because I am. Which is why I am asking.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:59:31 +0000

The first gold mining company that pays its dividends in actual gold will find its share growth exponential.

Is that because gold is currency or commodity?

By: mike

mike — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:04:11 +0000

...gold is a scarce commodity and as such its quantity does not fluctuate to any great degree...it's rarity prevents it's wanton consumption as a component which otherwise could be substituted by other more plentiful substances... it isn't flammable and it doesn't rust...and sticks to itself in the thinnest of dimensions when pounded, alas it can be counted upon to remain unchanged in a variety of situations although the real estate from which it is extracted cannot...silver, not so much in all regards...

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:47:03 +0000

There are people who are trying to move in this direction. GoldMoney ( nice name ) just released an iPhone app that allows people to pay each other in small amounts of gold and silver. Looks like they are working with an outfit called Concentric Sky.

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:28:08 +0000

I think this is a pretty awful article...the premise of it was fine, but poorly structured, poorly articulated and just not thought out. If you want to see some proper reasons why gold is useful as currency, do a search on the internet, there is some good info out there.

By: brc

brc — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:23:16 +0000

Some believe 'Real' in real estate comes from the word for 'royal' : meaning it's the governments land (royal estate), and you're just renting it for a period. Stop paying your property taxes to see who really owns the land. W/regards to Al Qaeda or other terrorists wiping out electronic records with an attack : while this would be devastating if possible, it would be extremely difficult with the myriads of backup systems and disaster recovery procedures all finance IT systems use. Some of the highest security anywhere is used to protect data centres storing the worlds financial information. It might seem virtual but it is just as real as physical bits of paper, just stored in microscopic bits. Even a direct hit with an airliner on the headquarters of trading companies in 9/11 only interrupted the IT systems for about 10 minutes before the automatic backups kicked in and got things going again. Some systems were out for longer but no a single byte of important data was lost. In the case of electronic money, it really is hard to kill, much harder than physical money which only needs to be destroyed once. This concept of electronic persistence should be familiar to anyone who has tried to erase an unwanted piece of information about themselves on the internet.